Anti-revisionism (known to its detractors as "Stalinism") is seen by its
followers as a healthy, solid, scientific ideological
road, devoid of both the alleged corruption and elitism of Trotskyism, and the perceived idealism of Left Communism. Nevertheless,
"anti-revisionism" can also be a vague and controversial label,
particularly in those cases where groups will argue over which of
them is really the "true" anti-revisionist.

Anti-revisionism is based on the view that the Soviet Union
successfully implemented Socialism during approximately the first
thirty years of its existence – from the time of the October
Revolution until the Secret Speech and peaceful
coexistence of 1956. Anti-revisionists point out that Stalin's
policies not only achieved impressive rates of economic growth and
argue that such growth could have been sustained and a prosperous
communism could have been achieved if the Soviet Union had remained
on this same course (see also the article Theory of Productive
Forces); they also typically further allege that the
worldwide ideological impact and leadership of the Soviet Union in
the 1930s and 1940s world labour movement represent a superior
ideological and social model of real "workers' power" that
was first ruined by the Secret Speech and was
later to re-emerge with China's Cultural Revolution, only to be
ruined again by the capture and deposition of the Gang of Four by
China's "state
capitalists" (or according to others, the denunciation of the
Cultural Revolution at the third session of the Eleventh National
Congress of the Communist Party of China, by Deng Xiao Ping).

According to anti-revisionists, these later attempts to 'fix' or
revise the socialist system represented a shift onto the
road to
capitalism and ultimately led to the downfall of the Soviet
Union and the betrayal of communist principles in all
self-proclaimed communist countries. Thus, revisionism is seen as the cause of
the fall of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist republics.

Several communist parties in the United States still
see themselves as explicitly anti-revisionist. Not every
contemporary communist party around the world
adhering to elements of anti-revisionism necessarily adopts the
label "anti-revisionist"; many such organizations may call
themselves Maoist, Marxist-Leninist
or even just simply "revolutionarycommunist". The Workers Party of Korea still claims an
anti-revisionist political line; however, this may not be an
accurate label either in self-description or description by others,
because of the official 'supersedence' of Marxist-Leninist thought
in North Korea by
the ideology of Juche.

Anti-Revisionist leaders

Those at a state level claiming an anti-revisionist
orientation actually vary widely in their ideological perspectives
from within communism.
An amalgamated list of the more famous self-proclaimed
anti-revisionist leaders: